Nicaragua celebrates 43 years of revolution: a clash between reality and media misrepresentation
July 19th is a day of celebration in Nicaragua: the anniversary of the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship. But the international media will have it penciled in their diaries for another reason: it’s yet another opportunity to pour scorn on Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. We’ll hear again about how the government “clamps down on dissent,” about […]
Masaya celebrates the 43rd anniversary of the revolution
Dan Kovalik was here in Masaya on Saturday and has just recorded this video to mark July 19th, the day the Sandinistas took power in Nicaragua in 1979, after the US-supported dictator Anastasio Somoza fled the country two days earlier.
The UN Refugee Agency is exaggerating the number of Nicaraguan refugees
Two years ago, COHA reported on the manufactured “refugee” crisis around Nicaraguans living in Costa Rica. Now the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is saying that “102,000 people fled Nicaragua and sought asylum in Costa Rica” in 2021. As this article shows, this statement is inaccurate, adding further to the myth that Nicaragua is suffering […]
Nicaragua a ‘Dictatorship’ When It Follows US Lead on NGOs
Daniel Ortega’s government in Nicaragua is “laying waste to civil society” according to the Associated Press. The Guardian called it a “sweeping purge of civil society,” while for the New York Times, Nicaragua is “inching toward dictatorship.” According to the Washington Post, the country is already “a dictatorship laid bare.” In a call repeated by […]
“Summit of Exclusion” Backfires on Biden
Jill Clark-Gollub, COHA Assistant Editor/Translator; Alina Duarte, COHA Senior Fellow; John Perry, COHA Senior Fellow “We would definitely have wanted a different Summit of the Americas. The silence of those absent challenges us. So that this does not happen again, I would like to state for the future that the fact of being the host […]
How “virtual crime scenes” became a propaganda tool in Nicaragua, Ukraine and Syria
Written jointly with Rick Sterling This article shows how media uses computer modeling and “virtual crime scenes” to assign blame for some extremely important international events. In these examples from Nicaragua, Ukraine and Syria, many people died in complex circumstances. The deaths at the “Mother’s March” in Managua, Nicaragua precipitated an attempted coup. The Maidan […]
The Summit of the Americas could be Biden’s next foreign policy embarrassment
The grandly named Summit of the Americas is due to be held in Los Angeles next month, if the Biden administration can decide who to invite and what to talk about if they turn up. As things stand, Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina, Honduras and most of the Caribbean states have said they will not attend if […]
Does Nicaragua deserve the support of progressive opinion?
A debate with William Robinson, University of California, Santa Barbara, Sociology professor and author of books such as “Faustian Bargain” about Nicaragua, hosted by TheAnalysis.
Chile’s new president will need his allies on the left
Gabriel Boric was elected president of Chile on December 19th. In an LRB article about his campaign, he was said to be embarrassed by one of the parties that supported him, when it welcomed Daniel Ortega’s re-election in Nicaragua the previous month. LRB published the letter below in its issue of January 27th, in response […]
How can Some Progressives get Basic Information about Nicaragua so Wrong?
On November 7, Nicaragua held elections in which current president Daniel Ortega received 75% support and, as a result, begins a new term of office in January. Not surprisingly, the US government described the election as a “sham.” Of more concern is that many on the left seem to agree. William Robinson’s NACLA article, Nicaragua: […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on